In the evening was the last Cinderella—and a very nice dance it was.
May 16.—I stopped at home to-day—as the great Debate began at 3, and I had to borrow chairs from several neighbours. I hope to-day to found a Debating Society in Tokio (there is such a dearth of anything more than dances and gossip, you at home couldn’t believe!), and have been raking people out—I have got Miss C—— and Miss H—— to oppose each other on the subject, “Chaperons should be abolished.” Frivolous enough—but one must put the pill in jam here in Tokio, and I hope gradually to get sober and instructive. The Debate was really more of a success than I had dared to hope, and I got nearly every one to speak by the little device of drawing numbers by lot, even Baroness d’A—— and Mrs. P——, who swore they wouldn’t. I had thought, after founding it to-day, to leave it till the hot season passed, but people are keen to have one in June—so it is encouraging. The use of a Japanese house came out strikingly to-day—when I took out my sliding partitions and made nearly my whole house one big room. The weather and the garden behaved themselves—and mercifully everything went off well. Of course the motion was lost, only two people wishing to abolish chaperons.
May 18.—A nice bright day. I bicycled home by the library and got some books of Hearn’s; I am thinking of getting up a Debate on Lafcadio Hearn next time, if I can; most people here knew him personally—and so few seem to realise that he was great, and almost all run him down! So I expect a very interesting time of it; there will be no difficulty in getting speakers to condemn, but who is going to stand up for him!
May 19.—I just called in on Miss B—— on my way home, and asked her to propose “That the picture of Japan presented in Lafcadio Hearn’s books is totally fallacious.” She consents—I anticipate some fun, and she is (I believe I have remarked before) quite the best conversationalist in Tokio, and a missionary (whom Hearn detested) to boot.
May 20.—Fossil cutting and examining all day. I have been arranging the fossil slides, the series got mixed, and it is no joke to keep them straight. Professor Y—— called in to see me (he is off to Europe very soon); and invited me to “tiffin at 5” in a few days. The wording is a little puzzling, isn’t it?
I called to inquire how Professor F—— is, and was glad to find him a little better, though very little, but with no prospect of perfect recovery.
Strawberries are beginning in the shops; it is such a treat after having had only apples and oranges for all these months. The temperature is delightful, like our July, and I enjoy it greatly, but the nights are still very cool, so that I have a hot-water bottle and the winter quilt. Things are beginning to bite me again, great horrid things of all kinds. Spiders and centipedes come out at night, and all sorts of creatures I never saw before; already I am rendered unnecessarily hideous with bites, what it will be later on I don’t know. I saw the J——s to-day, who once lived here twenty years; they said that Japan is a country that “grows on one” till it is heart-breaking to leave it. I feel that already, it is a pity I have stopped so long. I don’t ever want to go now except to escape insects. The horrid “semi” have begun to sizzle to-night. They are the things that sit in the trees all night and make a sound as though you have a headache; only when they stop for a second or two, you realise you haven’t got one inside your head—but outside. Well, even in Eden there was the serpent, and I suppose sizzling semis aren’t as bad as serpents, at any rate their influence is less far-reaching.
May 21.—Fossilising all morning, and in the afternoon I was “at home”—blessed day! These two days in the month I look forward to hugely. A number of people came, among them Mrs. H——, a charming woman, young Mr. M——, son of the man who was Dean of the University before Professor S——, and Professor S—— himself. He came at an interval between Mrs. G——’s call and some others, and we started on Japanese poetry. It seems to be very subtle, so subtle, in fact, that even such a cultivated man can’t understand it right away. Though there is no rhyme and the form lies in the middle of syllables, there is great ingenuity shown in finding words with double meaning suggestive of some poetical idea. The G——s, who called also, have been here thirty years, at least the Mrs. G—— has, and both she and her daughter like the Japanese greatly, and are much liked by them. I am going to get Miss G—— to oppose Miss B—— in the Debate on Hearn. I am glad to find some one who will stand up so sincerely and heartily for Lafcadio Hearn.
May 22.—After fossil-cutting walked along to the Faculty lunch with Professor M—— and talked nothing particular, as usual. At 5 I went over to Professor Y—— “for tiffin,” and was received in a foreign style room, and sad it was. Though so tiny a man, he has a large family, as all the Professors seem to have, unlike the corresponding men in our country. A Mrs. N—— was there, and a Miss X——, a teacher in a school. I resent very much the fact that all women school teachers (as well as girl pupils) have to wear a special kind of skirt (and very hideously ungraceful it is) over their kimonos, so that every one knows them to be teachers, just as we know hospital nurses. Perhaps it is the hideousness of the skimpy skirt, all open at both sides, that I resent, as much as the fact that it is a uniform marking these women out as apart from their fellows. Once, when I asked why it was all the teachers I saw were so plain featured, I was answered by a Japanese man, “well, if a girl is pretty, she can be married and does not need to go in for teaching.” And we hear so much of the “reverence of the Japanese for teachers.” It seems to me the Japan that we Europeans have at last learned to know, and whose characteristics we have had drummed into our ears, is already a thing of the past, and as altmodisch as our early Victorian furniture, which the Japanese are picking up as “new styles.” But though our furniture may change so fast as to bewilder them, does our national character too change with a startling rapidity equal to the Japanese?
The streets to-day looked unusually upset, and the reason of it is that it is the time of universal spring cleaning,—a spring cleaning that does not originate from the domestic tyrant, but from the main Government, and that is inspected by the police before you have a little yellow tab of paper pasted on your door to say that you are clean. All the tatami must be taken up and beaten, all the boards in the kitchen floor, under which lie hidden oil cans and charcoal, shoes or saucepans, according to the pleasure of the maids, must be taken out and the glory holes cleaned and smothered in white disinfectant powder; the front step of your hall, which, of course, is also a box in disguise, is cleared of its winter geta and powdered white, while the props of your house (all Japanese houses are raised about 1½ feet above the ground) are smothered till one thinks it has snowed. When the policeman is satisfied that all this has been done, and then only, will he give you the yellow ticket. It seems to me an excellent plan—one which would be applied with advantage to some of our slums. The smaller streets to-day were perfect markets, as from the little houses every single thing is turned out on to the road, and the mats beaten there. It added not a little to the thrills of bicycling, and was an instructive illustration of the simplicity of the smallest households.